How nice it is of me to be writing to you,when you’re not writing to me.

Virginia Woolf to Vita Sacville-West, July, 1927.

It
rains. I walk down to the meeting point: from my house to the busiest downtown
avenue. I carry my mother’s umbrella, the mint colored one with red flowers. It
looks like she bought it in some Chinese store: it isn’t sturdy. It’s not cold, it
only drizzles from right to left, in spite of being mid September.

We agreed to go for
coffee to our favorite bakery, near the Cathedral. Then to maybe go to the
movies or to visit the art exposition in local crafts market. Nothing set in
stone. “There’s a really interesting film in the local cinema”, he said. “¿Did
you know that that person will be at the
exposition?”, I answered.

To get to the avenue, I
must go down a cluster of stairs that starts at the edge of the church and ends
on our meeting point. I say cluster because said street is parts stairs and
parts ramp, and then the unevenness of the garage ramps from the houses. So the
railing comes and goes. The alley gives the feeling of have been sketched by
Escher. Towards the end, the stairs bifurcate: left and right, a hole opens up
in the middle which –for the sound of constant running water– gives way to
the sewers.

I go downstairs
carefully. I recall the lights of the ambulance and people circling a spot on
the floor: a long time ago, a lady rolled down the stairs to her death. After
that, the local government renewed the alley. Before, it was just stairs.

In total, there are two
hundred quarry steps, the edges gone and now a liquid roundness makes the most
accomplished feet slip. Sometimes those feet are mine. I stop by the church’s
closed gate. My boots are sinked in a black puddle that reflects the exact greenish
glow of the glossy umbrella. It’s early still, he won’t be here for five or ten
minutes.

I fell here when I was
thirteen, or maybe a few more steps towards the center of the stairs. I was
late to the end-of-school mass and I ran downhill without measuring the narrow
space of the step. A twisted ankle, hands inside the pockets of my sweater. I
fell sideways and hit my head to the edge of the sidewalk. I woke up between
the embrace of a neighbor and the screams of the nuns coming out from the
temple. Until I arrived to the hospital I could see myself in a mirror. Inside
the restroom of the ER, my head and half my face were soaked in blood that
matched my burgundy uniform, which smelled like iron. I looked like a heroine,
like an amazon. It didn’t even hurt. I’ve never looked more beautiful.

When I told him about my
incident, he laughed: “only you would be happy to crack your head in two”, he
said. I informed him that the sidewalk displayed my blood for three days before
the neighbor who found me washed it with water and Pine-Sol. “It was the most
interesting moment of my life”, I added faking hurt. Sometimes, in the darkness
of his room, he runs his hands through my hair and his fingers stop for a
moment on the six-stitched scar. As payment in kind, I kiss the scar in his
knuckles that he got on a fight. “We’re the same”, I tell him. “Marks of war.”

We have walked these
stairs up
and down many times. He likes them. “I see you at the stairs”, he texts me and
I obey. I wait for him and watch him arrive from the avenue. Sometimes we go up
to my house or even farther. Sometimes we go inside the church’s patio and sit
between the pepper tree and the shrine of the Patrocinio’s virgin. I then share
pieces of me: “There was a fountain before. I was baptized here. There, they
threw the coins. They fell like gushes from my father’s hands, like streams of
silvery water. There, the children rose their hands thinking of spending their
coins on orange juice and cookies. It was filled with sound. It is filled with
sound now, even though there’s only you and me whispering secrets.”

On one occasion he
tripped on a ramp. I caught him by the sweater before he fell. “What would I do
with you and your head cracked open?” We laughed like fools. I imagined him in
a puddle of blood the whole evening. It wasn’t the same heroic image that I had
seen in the hospital’s restroom.

The water of the puddle
trembles when a group of women walk downstairs to the avenue in a rush.

I have dreamt of that
place as well. At night, the entire city is mine. Its ruffs, the parks and the
treetops, the hills and the alleys. He and I, sitting on the ancient stairs.
Calmly, he says: “We can’t see each other anymore” and I don’t cry. His face
darkens even darker than the night surrounding us. “¿Do you remember that time
when I went through town, all the way to your window and tapped gently because
I didn’t want to fright you? I couldn’t stop looking at you, even if I wanted
to”, I tell him. Sometimes I dream that we dance and music comes through the
stones. Sometimes we’re not ourselves: we have different faces, different
lives, and we find each other in that middle point. One going up and the other
going down.

Although the question
remains: “What would you do if it weren’t me and you
weren’t you and we found each other?” He answers that probably
nothing because we wouldn’t even meet. I reassure him that what we share has
the same essence as any elemental force, that if we find shelter in the idea of
those stairs as our inhabitable place, we are destined to something more than a
relationship that will eventually end. So we choose corners between buildings,
balconies with view to the city, trees that bloom with time, I take all the
places we shelter on like sparrows in winter.

I see him turn at the
corner. He’s smoking, in spite the rain. His hair is wet. If he sees me under a
green umbrella besides the church, he doesn’t show it and leans in the wall.
Throws the cigarette butt to the sewer and I descend carefully. The stair opens
up in two. He’s in the right side. I go down to the left to surprise him, but
he begins climbing the stairs. I shout his name from below. He turns, with a
grimace. Confused, annoyed. “What were you thinking, huh?” he tells me, maybe
without meaning to. While he starts coming down to where I am, I take the
umbrella off me, thinking of giving it to him so that he stops getting wet. And
I –with all the intention– say: about gravity.